


Delta Oscar Echo

by AwkwardFortuna



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gaslighting, Mild Gore, Mind Games, One Shot, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Other, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), animal death but like, as a metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24177040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardFortuna/pseuds/AwkwardFortuna
Summary: “The deer with eyes like a child, we’re they the eyes of a specific child?”For a moment his heart falls into his stomach. He wants to remember but a part of him is digging its heels into the ground, refusing to be brought into the light. Were they the eyes of a specific child? Yes. Yes, the answer is always yes.Or, the Winter Soldier has a conversation with his daughter.





	Delta Oscar Echo

"I saw a doe in the woods. It had eyes like a child.”

He is sitting in the middle of a therapists' office, decorated in a way that appears to be warm and inviting.

There are succulents placed on every surface, the flowering kind with purple and pink leaves. The carpet is a dull beige color, but it looks soft like sheeps' wool. The chair he is sitting in is made of corduroy, a deep rust color and overly stuffed. The office is made to look like a room that your mother or grandmother would dwell in. It is supposed to be soft, warm, inviting, but the therapist before him, seated at the desk, is anything _but_ warm and inviting. She is all sharp lines and hard eyes. Pale skin and black hair. There is a scar at the base of her throat, hidden by a necklace that does little to cover it. She does not fit well within the picturesque environment, but Sam had personally recommended her.

“Is that why you killed those men? The hunters?”

They are discussing a crime he had committed, some time ago, before the world's population split in half, before he was Bucky, before he was James, even. Or, it could've been yesterday, he doesn't know. The present is no longer a concept that comes and goes like a dying light bulb. He can remember yesterday just fine and he can remember last week. But some of his memories are still coated by thick sheets of fog and if he dwells on them for too long he loses the memory all together.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember when you did it?”

“Yes. No...I don’t know. Could’ve been Ten years ago? Thirty years ago? Could’ve been sixty, even.”

“When you killed those men, were you aware of your actions?”

He is always aware of his action. Some nights the horror of what he's done comes crawling back to him. It settles in his mind and plants seeds of guilt that keep him up at night. He can't always remember every crime that he's committed but he knows that he's done them. _He's done them all._

“Yeah, I’m always aware.”

She nods her head and gives him a look of forced sympathies. There's a notepad placed in front of her though she hasn't written anything down since the moment he first walked in.

“So you remember every order you’ve ever executed?”

“Yeah, they all bleed together.”

“The deer with eyes like a child, we’re they the eyes of a specific child?”

For a moment his heart falls into his stomach. He wants to remember but a part of him is digging its heels into the ground, refusing to be brought into the light. _Were they the eyes of a specific child? Yes. Yes, the answer is always yes._

“...Yes,” he grunts, digging his heels into the soft carpet. "Yeah they were."

“What child?”

“I don’t remember.”

“But you remember every one of your missions, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Well, no? Sometimes I do...but they all bleed together. I just said-“

“So you don’t remember all of your missions?”

He waves his hand absentmindedly. There are voices screaming in his head.

“Guess not," he shrugs.

She gives him a smile. Perhaps to be comforting, perhaps to be mocking.

“So this child that you don’t remember, did they have brown eyes? Blue eyes? Green?”

They had honey colored eyes, brown just like the doe's. Wide and frightened, eyes bugging out the skull from fear. The hunter cocked his gun and shot her in the neck, painting the doe and the pasture red. _Bucky cocked his gun and the girl-_

“You still there? Soldier?”

“Don’t call me that." 

“Right, right. It’s _Bucky_.”

“No.”

“No?”

“It’s James, now.”

“James? Well, okay then _James_. What color were the girls eyes?”

“I never said the child was a girl.”

“You did when you said the deer was a doe. Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“Well," she laughs, "you don’t remember a lot of things do you? Sam tells me you didn’t even remember that we had an appointment today.”

“You spoke to Sam?”

“Yes.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said he’s worried about you. He says your pulling away from the team now more than ever." She places her hand on the desk and leans in close. Her fingernails are blunt cut, no nail polish at all. "He thinks your having a hard time accepting Steve Rogers' decision to go back in time."

“I'm having a hard time accepting it?" James scoffs. "I was the first one that Steve told. If I wanted to stop him, I could’ve.” 

“You’re right." She leans back against the office chair in faux relaxation. There's a coy smile on her face. "You didn’t stop him. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you stop him?”

“He made his choice, I wasn’t gonna come between that.” 

“Are choices important to you?”

“Yes.” James says. Then after a beat, “ _Obviously_.”

"Uh-huh," she twirls around in the chair once, then twice. She reaches below the seat and adjusts the height with its lever. “So the deer you were thinking of, it’s eyes reminded you of this girl. Why?”

“They we’re afraid.”

“Afraid? Of what?”

“Of the gun. Of dying. Of me." 

The grass turned red from the arch of blood that escaped the deer's neck but James had painted the entire pasture red with the hunters' blood. There was so much of it that it seeped into the soil. So much blood, and the screams of a dying deer and the scream of a bullet exiting its chamber, and a chorus of voices screaming so loudly that it shook the tops of the trees.

“But you didn’t shoot the deer, the hunters did. And then you shot them.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you shoot the girl?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you _think_ you shot the girl?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“You’re gonna have to do a lot better _'than I don’t know,_ ' soldier.”

“I thought there were no wrong answers in therapy.”

“Well, there are with me.”

“...And stop calling me soldier," he says after a moment. There's a ticking in the back of his brain, like a countdown. Her voice sounds familiar but he knows that it shouldn't be. It should't be.

“Sorry, soldier," she laughs. "I'm really, really, sorry. Honestly, I am."

“Who are you?” he asks. He wants to sound strong, he wants to sound demanding, but his voice comes out soft like a whisper. 

“What do you mean? I’m your therapist?”

“No. No, you aren’t.”

Most people think of deer as quiet creatures but when they're dying, _boy, do they scream_.

“Don’t you remember?”

“No." He mumbles. Sometimes his past memories are coated in a thick fog. Sometimes he remembers them and sometimes he doesn't, but the deer's eyes are something he will never forget. After a pregnant pause he says, “I think I had a daughter.”

The girl tilts her head back and laughs. “Your file says your sterile.”

“I had a daughter,” He says darkly, forcibly. He digs his heels into the carpet. He pinches the armrests of the couch.

“That’s funny.”

Most people think of deer as quiet creatures but when they're dying, _boy, do they scream_.

“It’s not a joke.”

Most people think of deer as quiet creatures but when they're dying, _boy, do they scream and scream and scream!_

“Okay, okay." She says, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. "So you had a daughter. What did she look like?”

“I-I don’t, I don’t remember.”

“She had brown eyes right? Like a deer? You remembered that.”

“She was afraid.”

“Why was she afraid?”

_The gunshot rings out and he paints the pastures red. The doe's eyes are left wide open, filled with terror, filled with dread. Most people think of deer as quiet creatures but when they're dying they can't keep from fucking screaming!_

“I-I scared her. I killed someone in front of her I-“ his cellphone is buzzing in his pocket.

“Who did you kill?”

“I said I don’t remember.”

“But you remember the deer.”

“Yeah.”

“So what happened to the deer.”

“It died.”

“And your daughter?”

“I don’t know.” His phone keeps buzzing, over and over and over again, like a fly swirling past his head. 

“The woman you killed, who was she?”

“I- I don’t know."

_You’re gonna have to do a lot better 'than I don’t know,' soldier._

The fabric of the couch comes away beneath his fingernails. He continues to dig in. "She was familiar. She was cold, I _hated_ her."

“Why?”

“Did...did I say I killed a woman?”

“Yes you did, soldier. Now answer the question.”

It was a Black-op in Russia. Triple body team with no coverage and no overhead commands. It was a recon mission. It was a recon mission. It was a-

“She was a target. Hydra employee gone rogue with company assets.”

“Weren't you called an asset, before?"

“Yeah," the soldier answers. "Yeah, I was."

“Are assets always people?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” she laughs. Then, shaking her head says “Was the asset your daughter?”

"Yes."

Yes. _Yes_. Yeah, because assets are sometimes people and he's always been numb to his own treatment, numb to the treatment of his fellow assets, but something about this particular asset made him _rage._

“So, when you killed her mom in front of her eyes what did you do with her?”

"With the asset?"

"With your daughter, yes."

“I told her to run.”

“And did she?"

The phone has since stopped buzzing in his pocket. He can hear banging at the front entrance of the office building. He can hear Samuel calling his name.

"Yeah. She ran fast, like a fuckin' deer."

The doe had colored the grass red and the soldier had painted the pastures red and the fawn had run off into the woods and the soldier was left standing in the-

There's a crash, most likely the glass of the entrance door.

The woman before him gets up from behind the desk. She kicks the office chair away from her and heads for the window.

“When Sam gets here," she says, pushing the windowsill's flowers down to the ground. They clatter against each other but they do not break. "First he’s gonna find Dr. Blake, tied up in the lounge.”

She peels the window open and steps up onto the ledge. "Then, he'll find the secretary with the keys to this office tied up in the coat closet."

She leans out the window, staring down at the street from ten stories high, watching as the cars go by and New York City's patrons as they walk, oblivious to the world around them, oblivious to the commotion happening above them.

"By the time he gets in here, I'll be long gone." She looks over her shoulder at him with big brown doe eyes that are no longer afraid. "When he asks who you've been talking to for the past half hour, what will you say?"

“Delta Oscar Echo," he recites.

“Good. That's good. I'll see you around then, soldier.”

She falls forward and out the window.

The soldier does not need to get up and out of his chair in order to know that she has landed perfectly on her feet.


End file.
